Venture Capital
In a landmark paper titled The Nature of the Firm published in 1937, then-26 year old economist Ronald Coase addressed the question of why firms exist. “Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is coordinated through a series of exchange transactions…
In his book Zero to One, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel addresses the distinction between globalization and technology. Globalization constitutes “horizontal progress”, he writes, or “taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere”; and China is the “paradigmatic…
In his new book Zero To One, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel writes: At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization – taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere. China is the…
In which industry does the US enjoy a globally dominant, almost unassailable position? No, it is not technology, pharmaceuticals, defence or aerospace. The one sector in which US dominance is near-absolute is higher education. Every year, some 80% of the…
“The whole process where people get an idea and put together a team, raise the capital, create a product and mainstream it — that can only be done in the U.S. It can’t be done sitting in India. The Indian part…
Energy and clean technology investing has proven to be disastrous for venture capitalists. Capital allocated to clean tech fell to less than half in 2013 from the $3.7 billion invested in 2012, and new clean tech-focused funds were able to…
For several decades, Silicon Valley has had a near-monopoly on innovation. The Valley emerged out of America’s deep commitment to higher education and scientific research, combined with the American will to maintain leadership in defence technology. Through the second half…
Most investors who have put capital behind consumer internet startups trying to build commoditised businesses will lose money. India’s technology landscape can be characterized as having seen three waves of evolution and growth. The first wave was led by the…
India is regarded as the world’s outsourcing center and a production powerhouse for generic drugs. Information technology and pharmaceutical companies have lent the India story a rich layer thanks to their reputations for efficiency. Aside from creating hundreds of thousands…